The Editor on Sun Online

The Editor has written a first person piece for Sun Online about the social network site twitter

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TENNIS ace Andy Murray is the latest Scots star to sign up to web phenomenon Twitter.

He joins the likes of music guru Calvin Harris and comic Hardeep Singh Kohli — not to mention Stephen Fry and Britney Spears — on the social networking site.

Former Scottish Sun man JAMES McIVOR — who now runs Scooped! Spoof Newspapers — is a self-confessed Twitter addict.

Here he explains just what all the fuss is about.

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I JOINED Twitter at the same time as I was signing up to loads of other social network sites — MySpace, Bebo and Facebook to name just three.

All these sites served their purpose of helping to promote my business but, for me, Twitter has raced ahead of the game.

Its strength is its simplicity — anyone can use Twitter without having to use fancy applications, although they are still available for the geeks.

Around 1,000 people follow my tweets each day and Twitter allows me to inform them of our new spoof newspaper front pages, or ask their advice on new ideas.

The easiest way to build up a following is to follow followers of followers, if you follow me.

But it’s not all about business, it’s great being able to share ideas with people of various different backgrounds, share newspaper or blog articles or just find out how people are passing their day.

Since I signed up, the number of people using Twitter has increased by 1,000 per cent — there are now 35million users — so it has become a very powerful site.

Twitter scooped the world with the first picture of the Hudson River plane crash.

Celebs are now getting into Twitter — as you only have 140 characters to play with, they can let their fans know what they’re doing very easily.

I like that I can scan Twitter and if anything grabs my attention I’ll go straight to that page. It’s a quick way to keep up with the news.

Earlier this month I launched The All Tweet Journal, an online Twitter newspaper that will allow people who use Twitter regularly to share their news.

It’s early days but the feedback has been great so far and the plan is to go from a weekly newspaper to a daily.

So if you’re not already on Twitter, twit are you waiting for?

You can follow James at @makingthenews and @alltweetjournal or visit his websites makingthenews.co.uk and thealltweetjournal.com.